Marvel's Luke Cage - Season One

MARVEL'S LUKE CAGE
Season One
(2016)
Overall: MEH

I do not mean to sound like a whinny comic book nerd as to date all three of my film, (or now television), reviews of these properties are inspired solely by my dislike for them, but maybe there is a silver lining to that.  After all, if most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe goes off without a hitch, then that means things are mostly running smoothly.  So I do not have to bring these successful superhero takes under any worthy scrutiny.  Sure there are minor faux pas in even the good ones, (too much punching in Captain America: Civil War, lame villain in Ant Man, seven-thousand ninjas per frame in Daredevil season two), but they get a pass for the majority of what they do right.  DC on the other hand still pretty solidly sucks.

September 28th, 2016 has brought us the forth Marvel Netflix series Luke Cage, the character having previously shown up in Jessica Jones just shy of a year ago.  That show was far better, as was Cage in it.  Plainly speaking, Cage tries a few things differently which is appreciated, but ultimately this is easily the first weak spot in the Marvel Television Universe.  For the first time here, there is far more bad than good and not "bad meaning good" but "bad meaning bad", just so we are crystal clear on our Run DMC lyrical references.

Per example, this would qualify as "bad meaning good".

First off, let us get Mike Colter's performance critique out of the way.  Honestly, he is pretty dull.  Since of course we have to go there, Luke Cage Power Man in the original Marvel comics was an embarrassingly "written by white people", jive talking, sassy black, street-smart superhero yes, but he was also a hellova lot more charismatic than THIS Luke Cage.  Besides the origin episode here, (certainly the best of the thirteen), Colter is a mix of corny dialog, a few spots of genuine emotion, some "come at me bro, I'm a badass" moves, and a lot of just grimacing or walking around.  To have only one episode dedicated to his transformation into his now bulletproof form which provides the only real compelling aspect into his character, followed by another twelve episodes doing anything but be compelling becomes a problem when the show ends up being this boring.

On that note, boy is it boring.  To admittingly over-simplify things, Luke Cage has a whole lot of back n forth between the Harlem Police Precinct and its interrogation room, to a Harlem night club, to Pop's barber shop, to the streets themselves where Cage is either hiding and running, or he is tired of running, back to hiding, back to not hiding anymore.  There are bad guys then there are different bad guys.  There are alliances then these alliances get broken.  There are bad guys making bad guy speeches.  there are bad guys getting arrested and then let go, only to get arrested again later.  Cage is the bad guy, then he is not, wait yes he is, wait again now this OTHER guy is, oh wait no he is not, let's go after him, no let's keep going after Cage.  Blah blah blah, the community of Harlem, blah blah blah.

Again, I am breaking it down Barney-style here.  None of these repetitive moments are in and of themselves bad and some are not even THAT reoccurring, but stretched to these many episodes with a kinda wooden lead in Colter, and it is all fighting an uphill battle for sure.  As far as the villains go, lots of people seem to agree that Cottonmouth is cool and Diamondback sucked.  I propose that they both sucked though and did so as far as the former is concerned since before the latter even showed up.  In other words, Cottonmouth is not great in comparison to how not at all great Diamondback is.

"He looks like a clown!" - Oh how I wish was an actual line of dialog.

The same problem kind of consists with both of them.  Each made a bunch of boring speeches.  They became villains through what they would consider tragic circumstances.  They are both victims and now they are both smirking badass crime bosses.  Cottonmouth was JUUUUUST getting interesting when he was brutally and surprisingly killed by his cousin Maria Dillard, (which was a rather cool and unexpected-in-a-good-way scene), so he in effect felt kind of rushed.  Yet he was also already getting kind of lame leading up to right before he got offed.  Huh, huh, "GOT-OFFed".

Diamondback on the other hand, yikes.  This guy was obnoxious from scene uno.  Leaving out the endless Bible quoting, (seriously if I see another villain in any medium who has Bible verses memorized, I am going to angrily pout I am), are we to believe that a criminal overlord such as this lunatic can seriously be as successful as he is?  He makes completely asinine decisions immediately, culminating in the entire hostage episode where, (even more inexplicably with so many witnesses and some of his thugs getting arrested), Cage is still virtually the only suspect and a massive manhunt never transpires for this Diamondback fellow.  So maybe in his defense, shit, act as recklessly as you want and the police still won't care.  Maybe he is on to something after all.

Diamondback also wore a goofy suite in the finale, but by that point my interest in the character was vacant.  His motivation and he and Cage's backstory was a combination of "Huh?" and "Well, *sigh* OK fine whatever".  Even at roughly half a season in length, it still prodded along and that is a big detriment as well.  Cage could be broken up into two acts, the first with Cottonmouth and then the second with Diamondback where much of the same plot elements get repeated, yet BOTH acts are very mundane.  This is not good.  As previously mentioned, season two of Daredevil slowed down to a yawning crawl once the Hand, Elektra, and the endless stream of ninja assassins kept back-flipping out of nowhere.  Still, that show had the entire Punisher arc going on both before and even during all the stupid kung-fu shit and goddamn did said arc redeem the whole.

Wait, we are talking about the same Punisher here right?

Marvel's Luke Cage unfortunately does not have such redeeming.  Also I'm going to go ahead and say it but the show's soundtrack?  Not that great.  That Faith Evans song was terrible and as much as I love me some Method Man, (and furthermore found his cameo scene encounter with Luke to be wonderfully hilarious), his impromptu "Bulletproof Love" rap over the radio was cringe-worthy.  This brings forth the problem that this show is trying desperately to take itself very serious by being topical, (it does not take a rocket scientist to see the parallels with the shooting of Trayvon Martin and all the "black lives matter" stuff to the citizens of Harlem rallying behind Cage), but in doing so we have Method Man making the show a burst-into-song musical, "Bring the Ruckus" having all the naughty F words edited out because we do not want anyone's feelings to be hurt, silly comic book Easter eggs, eye-rolling dialog, etc.

So it is kind of a tone issue and I get it.  You want your program to make as many people happy as possible so lets put some sex appeal in there.  Lets put some funny lines in there.  Plus some brutal violence.  How bout some comic book nods for the dorks?  Oo, and lets make it topical and relevant to show that it is smart.  There is certainly a way to balance all of this and pointing out such things may seem like splitting hairs but really, said things are only made more noticeable by how not compelling the overall story here is.  If this was more solid and the leads more memorable, then the tone could shift more successfully.  Yet couple in all the seriously annoying product placement that takes you right out of what you are watching, (who wants a Milky Way and a cool refreshing Country Time lemonade to wash it down with, eh?), plus all the aforementioned problems and Cage just does not work.

There was a good opportunity here to make a sort of comedy, but that would never happen in this politically sensitive, PC age.  You cannot make Luke Cage a hero for hire who says "jive turkey" and only beats up bad guys when good guys pay him.  Even though THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT HE DID IN THE COMICS.  Instead, you have to make it gritty and real and relevant, which is fine.  The point though is that some goofy characters simply do not translate that way and Luke Cage and his gallery of bad guys and supporting players are kinda goofy.  Similar deal with Spider-Man and his rogues.  Why not make this show a blacksplotation throwback?  Because people would complain that it is racist most certainly.  Plus, Disney owns Marvel now, so we cannot have that.

Or can we...?

If Luke Cage gets another season in the future, than maybe they will have better luck.  As it stands, The Defenders is going happen first and this should most assuredly be a swell thing.  Yet Cage left enough loose ends to wrap-up and it even ended on kind of a downer as there are still some bad guys to get their comeuppance for sure.  For those non comic book readers out there, at one point both Luke Cage and Jessica Jones were hired as Matt Murdock's bodyguards and here is hoping they go that route before too long.  Throw in a few "jive turkeys" and superheroes banging each other and clearly an overall improvement will be made.  Just sayin'.